“Dating Torin stopped the gossip.”
What about Eirik? They’d started dating just before the nightmarish meet. Had she ditched him for Torin? Had he left before or after she started dating Torin?
Before I could ask her about Eirik, we turned a corner and I smothered a groan. Drew and a bunch of football players and cheerleaders were by the entrance to the cafeteria. He was the last person I wanted to see.
“What is it?” Raine asked when I slowed down.
“Uh, nothing.” As we got closer, Jaden Granger saw us first. I couldn’t stand him.
“Look who’s back,” he said. “Miss Prissy Jemison. You owe me a date, Cora.”
In his dreams. Annoyance crossed Drew’s face, but he quickly covered it with a smile. He was cute with brown hair and topaz eyes, and I couldn’t help wondering what he’d done to make me kiss him. He so wasn’t my type.
“Hey,” he said.
“Hey.” Not sure what to do, I gave him a brief hug. The ankle cast and the crutch made it über awkward. “How’s your leg?”
“Itchy. Can you sign it?”
I chuckled. “Sure, but I don’t have a Sharpie right now.”
“Later then. What happened to you?” he asked.
Raine was busy teasing the other ballplayers about their last game, so they didn’t focus on my conversation with Drew. “I needed to get away. Sorry about Keith. I didn’t know or I would have called.”
“Yeah, a bummer,” he said. “He was a nice guy.”
“You had to be living under a rock not to have heard,” Jaden said, butting into our conversation. “They turned him into a hero. Please. He was an idiot for jumping in the middle of a stupid fight for some chick he wasn’t even doing.”
“You are an ass, Granger,” one of the players said.
“Whatever, dude,” Jaden said. “Just sayin’. I gotta get some to care.”
“We have to go, Drew,” I said, signaling Raine. “I’ll see you later.”
“Text me,” he said.
As soon as they were out of sight, I relaxed. “Jaden is such a tool.”
Raine laughed. “And a groper.”
“No way.”
“Yes way. You, uh, a friend went out with him and he tried to cop a feel under the table. She ditched his sorry ass.”
“Only an idiot would go out with him.” Kicker, Naya, and Sondra saw us and waved, and suddenly I wished we weren’t sitting with them. All they ever talked about were books and their character crushes. They all had blogs and did reviews. “I wish we’d gone with Torin.”
“I can text him.” Raine pulled out her cell phone.
“Nah. It’s okay.” I didn’t want to be a third wheel.
We got in line and collected our food. We were walking toward Kicker and the others when I saw Raine’s father. What was he doing in the cafeteria? He looked thin and pale. The last time I saw him, he’d just come back from the dead. Everyone had thought he’d died in a plane crash, but a captain of a boat had fished him out of the sea and taken him to safety. I never heard the entire story about his rescue, but he’d arrived home the same day lightning killed our teammates.
As I watched him look around, I waited for Raine to say something. She was staring straight at him. He walked right across a table and I realized why. It was not Mr. Cooper. It was his soul. No one had told me Raine’s father died. He was always nice to me and often treated me like a daughter.
He stopped in front of me. Like most souls, he tried to talk, but I couldn’t hear him. I shook my head. He kept talking. My vision grew blurry as tears rushed to my eyes. When I blinked them away, he’d disappeared.
4. Sad News
“Are you okay?” Raine asked.
“Yeah.” I wanted to hug her and ask her to forgive me for refusing to talk to her when she’d come to my house. Raine had been so close to her father. Her mother was great, but she was way out there, a throwback to Woodstock and the hippie movement. Her father, on the other hand, was a down-to-earth guy, and Raine adored him. Now he was dead.
Not sure how to approach the subject of her father without revealing I could see souls, I focused on my food and didn’t bother to participate in the conversation at our table. Kicker and the others were discussing some popular book. Raine was a serious reader, but she wasn’t obsessed with characters like the other three.
I couldn’t eat. My thoughts kept going back to Mr. Cooper. Any second, I expected someone from the principal’s office to come for her or the paging system to blast her name and summon her to the office.
Neither happened.
“Are you coming to practice today?” Sondra asked. She was the co-captain of the swim team.
I shook my head. “I don’t know. I haven’t really thought about it.”
“We have a meet next weekend, and Doc will expect you to be there,” she added.
I frowned. “I haven’t swum in weeks.”
They stared at me as though I’d lost my mind. Then I realized what I’d just said.
“Uh, did I miss a meet?” I asked quickly, hoping to distract them.
“No, but we are going against the Cougars again, and the four of us,” Kicker pointed at herself, me, Sondra, and Naya, “are in the relay. Just like we did before Halloween Invitational. Hopefully this time they’ll catch our bubbles. She hurt her head during the home game and had a concussion, so doesn’t remember some things,” Kicker explained to the others, who continued to stare at me.
I glanced at Raine. Her eyes volleyed between me and Kicker, but she didn’t say anything. It was obvious something troubled her. She was the best sprinter in the group, yet Kicker hadn’t mentioned her. She must have no intention of coming back to the team.
I couldn’t ask her about it without revealing my ignorance. Not being sure what I could or could not say was starting to give me a headache. Lunch could not be over soon enough.
“How’s your mother doing?” I asked Raine as we walked back to our lockers.
“Good, considering.” She sounded sad.
“Considering what?”
She stopped walking and looked at me with shiny eyes. “My dad is sick, Cora. He has this, uh, really aggressive brain tumor. They tried to treat it, but...” Her voice trembled to a stop. “He can die any time.”
My throat closed, and tears sprung to my eyes. He was already dead. Once again, I couldn’t tell Raine the truth without revealing my ability to see souls.
“When did you find out?”
“A couple of weeks ago, but they knew about it before the plane crash and didn’t tell me. It’s the reason Dad went to Hawaii. He was seeing some specialist.” Tears swam in her eyes. “I was so pissed and hurt when I found out. I couldn’t look at them without wanting to… scream and yell at them.” A tear slipped, and she swiped at it.
“I’m so sorry.” I hugged her, wishing I could tell her the truth about her father. I fought tears and lost. I wasn’t a crier, but shit kept piling on me today.
People walked by and stared at us. I glared at them, and the few with a sense of decency looked away. The rest of the morons watched us and whispered.
There was weird warmth behind me, and then Torin asked, “Are you okay?”
I looked over my shoulder to find him studying us with concern.
Raine left my arms and walked into his. The envy I’d felt toward her disappeared. The last few months must have been tough on her. First, she almost died because of a weird accident, now her father was dead. The worst part was I couldn’t tell her.
Feeling useless and angry with myself, I removed books for my afternoon classes and closed my locker. When I glanced toward Raine and Torin, they were gone. I searched along the students around the lockers. They weren’t in the hallway. It was as though they’d disappeared into thin air. Weird.
Shaking my head, I started for my next class.
I was in the math hallway when someone snatched my hand and the hallway became blurry. The next second, I was in total darkness
. Only one person could move that fast.
Echo.
Seriously, I should kill him slowly and painfully. The problem was, he’d probably self-heal, or haunt me since I could see souls.
I fumbled for the switch, and my hand closed over his. Light flooded the tiny room. We were in the Kayville High make-out closet. Echo scowled at me. I was used to seeing him smirk, so his ferocious expression seemed odd. Still…
I backhanded his chest. “What’s wrong with you? You can’t just snatch me in the middle of the hallway like that. People would have noticed.”
He snorted. “Like I care what they think.”
“I do.”
“Since when? You hate this place.”
“Since always and I happen to love it here.”
“Damn the Norns. You wouldn’t be here if they hadn’t messed with your memories.” He leaned in and pinned me with his wolfish eyes, which were nearly all golden now. He really had gorgeous eyes, the green surrounding the gold changing size with his mood.
“Back to what’s important,” he said. “Who made you cry?”
“No one.” I turned to leave.
He pressed his hand on the door and stopped me from opening it. “Some waste-of-space-Mortal made you cry, Cora, and I want to know who it is so I can gut him alive and personally escort his worthless soul to an island where he’ll beg for a second death.”
He really was impossible. “Enough with the second death threats. You don’t kill.”
“There’s always the first time,” he said without missing a beat. “Who is it?”
I ignored his question. “Can you be killed?”
“By decapitation, but no one would dare tempt it unless they have a death wish.”
“Really? I don’t have a death wish, and I’m so loving the thought of you headless.”
He laughed. “Stop hedging, doll-face. Who made you cry?”
“No one. I saw Raine’s father in the cafeteria and she told me he’s been diagnosed with a brain tumor and is dying, so I just lost it because he’s this amazing guy and she’s really close to him…”
My voice trailed off when he pulled me into his arms. For a moment, I let him hold me. He smelled of leather, outdoors, and a musky scent that made me want to burrow in his neck. Last weekend, when I wasn’t driving myself crazy, thoughts of his sensual lips and how they felt would mock me. Right now, all I had to do was lift my head and we’d kiss.
“It’s okay,” he said softly, his warm breath fanning my forehead.
My knees went weak, and my breathing grew erratic. He didn’t help matters when he started rubbing circles on my back. I gave in to temptation, turned my head, and buried it in the crook of his neck to smell him better. I inhaled.
He leaned back and smirked as though he knew. “I don’t think I understand what seeing him in the cafeteria has to do with your tears,” he whispered, “but I promise you, it’s not what you think.”
He was patronizing me, and just like that, thoughts of kissing him went poof. “I saw his soul, Echo.”
“I heard you the first time.” He pulled me closer again and rested his chin on the crown of my head.
“That means he must be dead,” I said.
“No, he’s not.”
“Yes, he is.”
“He can’t be.”
I wiggled out of his arms. When he moved closer and I didn’t have anywhere else to go, I pressed both hands against his chest. “Stop and listen.”
“But I like holding you.”
I threw him an annoyed glance. “Don’t say things like that. He was trying to tell me something. Then he disappeared.”
Echo shook his head, covering my hands with his. “That’s impossible. I would have known if a reaper came for him. I was supposed to reap his soul, but I gave him a free pass a couple of months ago. No reaper can touch him now.”
I shook my head. “What?”
“He was in some village in Central America dying, but I didn’t reap his soul as a favor to a certain Valkyrie, who now owes me.” He stroked my hands, distracting me again.
I yanked my hands from his chest and raised them. “Okay, stop. You can’t keep throwing words at me without explaining what they mean. It’s driving me crazy. What are Valkyries? Norns? Hel’s Hall? You can’t explain right now, so don’t say another word. I’m going to class and after school I’m coming straight home. Be there to explain everything, or else.”
He grinned.
“What?”
“I like this bossy side of you. It’s very… exciting.” His grin turned wicked.
I shook my head. I’d never met a man with a one-track mind. “Just when I’m beginning to see something redeemable in you, you open your mouth and spoil it.” I reached for the door, but he pressed on it. “Echo—”
“You can’t just step out of the closet into a hallway full of Mortals. They’re not only ignorant, they spook easily, like a school of fish. Until you learn to engage your runes and become invisible, I’ll help. Come closer.”
“Didn’t you just say a moment ago that you didn’t care what they thought?”
“I don’t, but you do.” He slipped his arm around my waist, pulled me to his side, and smirked when I stiffened. “Trust me.”
That was one thing I couldn’t afford to do. “For now.”
He chuckled, the sound dark and full of mischief. Runes inked his skin. He took the blade from the back of his pocket and sketched on the door so fast his hand was a blur. When he stopped, the door shifted and moved until a portal formed. I could see students hurrying past, some walking toward the cafeteria for second lunch, while the others headed toward the classrooms. No one appeared to notice us.
“They can’t see us?” I asked.
“Mortals can’t see a lot of things, including portals. Which way are we going?” Echo asked.
“I am going right. You? I don’t know.”
“I’m going reaping, but first, I’ll check on Raine’s father. Someone might be playing games. Enjoy the ride.” He stepped into the hallway, moving so fast nearby students were a blur. He must have carried me because my feet didn’t touch the ground. When he slowed down, none of the students even looked at us.
“Later, sweet-cheeks.” He kissed me and was gone. My lips were still tingling when I reached my class.
The rest of the day was a blur. My last class of the day was P.E., and I spied Torin by the entrance of the gym, watching us play basketball.
Something shifted in my stomach. Could Raine’s father be dead and he’d come to tell me? I excused myself to go talk to him, but by the time I turned around, he was gone.
Weird guy.
I changed out of my gym clothes then reached for my cell phone as I left the gym. My call to Raine went unanswered. Echo was waiting for me at home with answers, but I couldn’t ignore the gnawing feeling in my stomach.
I threw my backpack in the passenger seat and started my car. Instead of going home, I headed east toward Raine’s house.
***
It was November and most trees were leafless. Thanksgiving was around the corner, yet some people still had their spooky figurines and lawn decorations out. Orange Halloween garbage bags filled with leaves lined lawns and sidewalks. If only they knew about the beings that walked among them unseen, they would stop with the fake ghosts and monsters.
I pulled into Raine’s cul-de-sac. Her car wasn’t in their driveway. The house next to theirs must have finally sold. It had a For Sale sign for, like, forever.
As I parked by the curb, Mrs. Rutledge, Raine’s nosy neighbor, stepped out of her door. The woman had something against young people because she never warmed to me or Raine.
I went to the door and rang the doorbell, but no one answered. Mrs. Rutledge continued to watch me from across the street. I’d bet she was waiting for me to ask her about the Coopers. I refused to accommodate her.
Instead, I removed my phone and called Raine. When it went unanswered, I texted her then got in my car
. Mrs. Rutledge’s narrowed eyes followed me as I drove past. I waved. If Echo wasn’t waiting for me at home with answers, I would have gone to the Coopers’ shop. Raine’s family owned a shop that sold mirrors and framed portraits.
Butterflies flitted in my stomach the closer I got to home. Mom was baking. I could smell pies before I parked my car. She supplied local shops with pies and organic fruit. When it was warmer, she sold some of the produce at the Farmers Market. We had so many apple, peach, and apricot trees.
My parents used to be elementary school teachers before Granny died and left them the farm. While Mom turned her attention to organic farming and baking pies, Dad chose to chase his dream of becoming a writer. They were both successful, and I was rather proud of them.
“How was school, sweetie?” Mom called out when I stepped inside the house.
“Okay.” I dropped my backpack on the living room chair and joined her in the kitchen. She stopped whipping the pumpkin batter, hugged me, and leaned back to study my face.
“I’ll ask again. How was school?”
I grinned. “Tough, but I’ll be okay.”
Mom’s eyes narrowed. “Your father said the principal acted weird.”
I tasted the batter. Mmm. Good. “He wasn’t acting. He is weird.”
Mom pinched my nose playfully. “What a terrible thing to say.”
“Is there cooled pie?” I asked.
“Apple?” Mom teased.
I shuddered. She knew I couldn’t stand apple pie. We ate so many apple products the sight of apples gave me a bellyache. “Pumpkin.”
“Check the fridge. Dinner won’t be ready for a while.”
“That’s okay. I have tons of homework.” I opened the fridge and removed the pie and two cans of pop. Echo had better be upstairs. I cut a huge chunk of pie and got two forks. I slipped one in the pocket of my jacket just in case Mom asked.
“You must really be hungry,” she commented as I walked passed her.
“It was mystery meat today.”
“If you need help with anything, bring it downstairs.”
“Sure, Mom.” I grabbed my backpack and hurried upstairs, my heart pounding. I pushed open my door, peered inside, and sighed with disappointment.
Runes #03 - Grimnirs Page 6